Carmel Valley Ranch | Carmel Valley, California
A “corporate retreat,” to me, has always sounded like the setup for a Vince Vaughn/Owen Wilson buddy comedy, complete with golf course hijinks and drunken karaoke sessions and such. Apparently what a corporate retreat actually is is a vacation that entails the person who is actually employed by said corporation disappearing all day long for scavenger hunts and bonding activities while the person who is not employed by said corporation…well, sits by the pool.
Which is AWESOME.
I mean, not “awesome” like “relaxing” – because a) I’m frantically trying to slot an eight-hour workday into an hour and a half nap time, and b) my kids are all MUST BE IN THE WATER NOW AND FOREVERMORE, and they’re not even close to the age where I can just send them off to party while I sit under an umbrella with my US Weekly, but still: it’s great.
I’ve gone down to Carmel a bunch of times in the months since we moved out here – it’s one of my all-time favorite towns to visit – but Carmel Valley is something different: a more rustic, even lower-key version of Carmel, with horses and turkeys wandering around. Maybe a deer family. And the ranch we’re staying on is essentially just a big sprawl of land with pools and golf courses and horse stables scattered around in between beautiful rooms and fun restaurants. There are a bunch of exercise studios for the yogically-inclined, but there’s also a family hot tub (set to a lower temperature than a traditional one, so kids can go in). …Guess where I’ve been spending most of my time?
Oh, and the ranch’s main restaurant has chicken wings that immediately went into the category of All-Time Best Dishes I’ve Ever Eaten. (Really. I know, chicken wings don’t sound exciting. These had honey and chili flakes and soy sauce and ginger on them, and they were ridiculous and I have eaten them three times in two days.)
And there are s’mores by the fire pit. Every. Night. I’m driving back home this morning, but I could happily stay here more or less forever.
